


Missing Data

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-26
Updated: 2012-06-26
Packaged: 2017-11-08 15:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then there was Dave. Dave Strider. The Knight of Time, the coolest cool kid that ever did chill. The Alpha Dave escaped being rewritten and reworked and contorted by the whims of the recreated universe, just like the others, but the Beta Daves were left behind. To die and be erased and then translated into a new universe, a universe in which there will never be another Alpha Dave ever again. A universe that doesn't need a Knight of Time, or even a Knight at all, but that has the fingerprints of one smeared all over it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Missing Data

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh. I'm not really entirely happy with this one on a whole, I feel like it's too jumpy, but I'm trying to clear all of the character vignettes and ficlets out of my in-progress fics folder, and I'm fairly sure where I was going to go with this was jossed. I'm still pretty happy with the ideas conveyed, but... y'know.
> 
> Enjoy. I don't own the characters, but the words and thoughts are my own. Yada ya.

The entire universe was reset. With the sound of a colossal disk scratching to a stop, echoing into every corner of existence that was left, there was the end. The new beginning came right on its heels, inevitably, as if no time had passed: a fresh disk whirring away without a hitch. All of the information from the last disk had been salvaged, transferred, but it was all in the wrong order. And, most importantly, four kids made it out without being transferred over.

Three were recreated, almost, like shadows, extrapolated from their surroundings, or maybe echos, echos of the scratch that had bounced far enough that they'd made it into the veil and back into the fresh start, mottled and changed and not nearly so strong or loud or powerful, but still there. Still sort of like themselves, or at least like the hole that their absence left. Then there was Dave. Dave Strider. The Knight of Time, the coolest cool kid that ever did chill. The Alpha Dave escaped being rewritten and reworked and contorted by the whims of the recreated universe, just like the others, but the Beta Daves were left behind. To die and be erased and then translated into a new universe, a universe in which there will never be another Alpha Dave ever again. A universe that doesn't need a Knight of Time, or even a Knight at all, but that has the fingerprints of one smeared all over it.

He didn't have to be recreated by circumstance and fate and paradoxes. Well, actually, just paradoxes. The Dave Strider that goes on to make bad movies, that never quite gets to raise the paradox child that he remembers as his paradox brother while he's sleeping and when he's caught off-guard; he is all the Beta Daves. And, just like them all, he shouldn't exist, and even though he's been given breath again for a while, it won't last for much longer.

He gives up that last breath for the new world and the new team, to give them some kind of fighting chance. Because, out there, his Alpha Self still lives, and he'll come back and do what the amalgamation of his failed iterations could never do. He dies beside Rose, the more mangled still Rose that he clings to because, hey, it's something, and while she can't remember, she _can_ see forward, and together they make a team and something like a fighting chance.

They make the alignment of the Best Possible Universe, of the one iteration that, damn everything, will finally win the game.

Most of this he only really remembers subconsciously, even though his best friend slash ironic partner slash psychiatrist slash psychic helps him to be a touch more aware of it. And facts like those make his a rather unfulfilling life.

Jade had her actual grandson to raise, to fight for, and Rose has her visions of the kids in the future and of everyone playing the game. Him... he has vague memories and inklings of things that were, a long long time ago, before their universe began, and some days he really thinks he's just gone insane. At least he has one other crackpot to lean on in his weakness, right?

Sometimes he wishes he could've had a chance to know John in the new universe. John, the one who didn't have visions and never even got to see his kid either. He lived a fairly normal life, and Dave wonders some days if he ever had moments in preparing for the kid he'd never meet where he felt exactly like Dave does. As nice of a thought as it is, he rather hopes not.

He still doesn't know anything about being a hero. He's fighting for a lot—Rose, John, and Jade, all versions of them; the Alpha Him; his kid-to-be and the friends he'll make; his Bro and everyone else who's died because of their idiotic mistakes; the whole fucking world—and maybe that's the secret. Or maybe it's doing what no one else is mental enough to do. They call him a hero, and he doesn't know what it is that makes him so heroic, nor does he know if he agrees with them—he doesn't _feel_ any different—but he doesn't correct them. He just goes on, after the first battle, and rejoins with Rose for the second.

They're doomed to lose—they always were—but they fight anyway. Because it's not about winning or losing, at least not yet. At least not for them. They were always fighting a losing battle, and winning little victories as fate coalesces around them isn't going to change that.

They had to die sometime, anyway, and they weren't going to put it off for the millennia it would take for them to actually play the game alongside their kids. So, in a mirror of something that happened a long, long time ago that Dave remembers in a fuzzy sort of clarity, they set out to sacrifice themselves. In a break from tradition, this time, they don't come back.


End file.
